The International Christmas Extravaganza.

Holidays away from your family can always be difficult for everyone.  That is why we were so lucky this year to be adopted by three families from all over the globe.  To start we had  a  superb French Fête.  Guillaume was the first person we met in Paris and he assured us we would spend a traditional French Christmas with him and his family.  His family was so funny and we had a great time learning about and trying cuisine from all over France (including escargot).   His mom is a brilliant cook and even though she might not be used to cooking vegetarian food she sure made some wonderful tofu stuffed mushrooms, ratatouille, and whipped truffles.   Included was the traditional French cheese course,  featuring one of the stinkiest cheeses in the world, which comes from the north of France.  This families hospitality already had us both entranced, but by the time Guillaume's mother brought out her homemade berry ice cream, Chocolate Mousse and Cake we wanted to be adopted for real.  

After we said goodbye to Guillaume's family we went to stop by a Mexican Fiesta at our friend Alfredo's house.  We caught the last  bits of some authentic guacamole, and rum punch that helped build our french speaking courage.  We put on some salsa/80's/mariachi music mix and had a dance party that lasted to the wee hours of the morning.  

On Christmas  we  headed over to our old place in the 18th to spend an evening with Belinda and Helen for an Australian/British Christmas dinner.  Helen was in extreme Christmas spirit and we spent the evening decorating the house, listening to old Christmas classics and Judy even dressed up as Santa.  The night ended with a good game of Pictionary (British Edition) and even though neither of us knew what a paint pot or cricket ball was, we still won.  

Birthday Party!

Today is Grant's Birthday.    Judy surprised him with a trip to the amazing Les Arts Decoratif museum for the Sonia Rykiel 40 year anniversary exhibition.  The exhibition featured over 250 outfits from Sonia as well as lots of videos,  pictures, and lots of other memorabilia.  At the very end of the exhibit was the 30 something outfits that all theses wonderful designers had made which were inspired by Sonia for her 80th runway show.   If you haven't seen the video of her last runway show you need to check it out.  It looks so much fun and being able to see all the pieces in person was such a special surprise. http://soniarykiel.com  The rest of the museum had great work in it as well.  It is a lot of interior and product design from the 1700's all the way to 2000's The place is huge and we only got through a couple other galleries before we headed out.

After that we returned back to the house to make a little dinner.  We had real tacos this time and they were so good.  The cake was probably the most sinful thing either of  us had ever eaten.  But hell, what are birthdays for.    

MEXICAN FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just as everyone warned us, there is absolutely no mexican food around town.  If you ask anyone if they know of anything they just say "oh yeah I know this Tex-Mex place."  What the hell is Tex-Mex.  Do the french really consider a chili dog Mexican food.  Paris desperately needs tortas, burritos, nachos, tacos, something, at this point I just want a tortilla.  The situation was looking really grim until our mexican friend Alfredo told us he knows of this little place that sells handmade goods from Mexico and if you ask them they will make you tortillas.  We dropped whatever we were doing and pretty much ran over to the place in a full sprint.   We got to the place and our faces were lit up like the sun.  Our excitement was quickly smashed when we saw the prices, 4.50 euros for a can of beans? 7.50 euros for hot sauce???? at this point we were afraid to ask how much the tortillas were.  It turns out they are 8 euros for a dozen. OUCH!!! Did we mention we are from California?  The land of 2 dollars for 3 tacos.  On the plus side the lady actually makes them herself and brings them to you in a couple of days.   Not to mention she pretty much has the market cornered.  She is very nice and also offers some really beautiful clothing made by hand from a family in Mexico.  She will even make you a piñata too.  We forked over the money and ran home to make some potato tacos with pinto beans.  Finally some real spicy hot sauce!!!!  

How to move free furniture across Paris with little or no resources

We desperately need furniture for our place and there doesn't seem to be the same overabundance of free furniture dumped all over the streets like there was in San Francisco.  Not to mention people try to get top dollar for all of their things off craigslist (100 euros for a 2 year old ikea table? Please.) Luckily we did find one nice guy who offered us his two shelves for free. He assured us he lived quite close to us and that we should have no problem carrying the things back to our house.  While we were walking we realized that when he said close to our house he meant on the other side of town.  About an hour later we arrived at his house and realized that each bookshelf had to weigh at least 100 pounds.  Maybe over the phone he didn't realize that Judy was only 5 feet tall and weighs only 90 pounds but there was no way we could do it.  We tried with one and got about a half block before we ditched it behind a building.  We headed back to the house to try to think of a new method.  Judy came up with the brilliant idea of using our old suitcases as makeshift dollies and off we went again.  The one we ditched was long gone by the time we returned so we tried with the other one.  It worked pretty good and minus a few little bumps and a million puzzled stares we welcomed our new shelf into our little home.  

Cheap Show at Cafe du Paris

We were invited to a cabaret type show that our friend Camille was performing in.  We didn't really know what to expect, except that it was free and the three time world champion tap dancer (claquettes) would be performing.  What we witnessed was nothing short of amazing.  The video quality may be lacking but each act was so good.  The opening act, a young woman performing traditional accordion songs in several languages had Judy completely entranced.  Camille a.k.a Belle Fée Gore sang songs from the 30's about drug use.  The tap dancer had the fastest feet i've ever seen. Then we were treated to a surprise can-can performance.   It was Sooooo french and we had a lot of fun.  

Ode to a blouse.

In quite possibly the strangest event in our life we lost one of our most beloved creations.  We were woken up at 2:30 in the morning today by a complete stranger who had somehow broken into our apartment and decided to browse our rack of clothing.  Once he realized that we were here he grabbed what he could and made like the wind out of the door.  Luckily he dropped most of the things but he did make off with our favorite blouse.  I found the hanger sitting about three blocks away in a pack of parked vespas.  I have no idea what this person would want with our blouse but if I ever find anyone in Paris wearing it I will rip it right off their body and demand an explanation, or maybe the blouse will be the hot new item at H&M next season. You never know.  Never the less we are very shook up from this event. Please spread the word and if anyone knows anyone who may know where it is please email us.   The blouse is one of a  kind and very very special to us.  

Home Sweet Home

Holy shit finding an apartment in Paris has to be one of the most stressful things either of us have ever had to deal with in our whole life.  I have never had to sign my name on so many pieces of paper before, I felt like a celebrity.  But it finally worked out and we got an amazing little place right in the heart of the Marais.  Next to some amazing boutiques and galleries. Here are just a couple photos of our place and one from the craziest move by taxi ever committed.  All the driver kept saying was we should have gotten a bigger taxi.  I hope we never have to go through anything like this ever again.  

Vegetarian Thanksgiving in France (while trying to move)

Its been a crazy past couple of days and we still have a couple more ahead of us.  Our sublet ended on Thursday and  we thought we were going to be getting the keys to our apartment on Friday but as it turns out we aren't going to get them until Monday.  The French require so much paper work and that takes so much time apparently.   Never the less our lovely friend Berenice is letting us stay at her place while she is out of town for the weekend, Thank god.

    We still had time to make our Thanksgiving meal at our old place before we had to get out.  Thanksgiving doesn't exist in France and neither do veggie burgers so we made due with what we could.  Goat cheese mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy, broccoli, baguette, wine and some cookies, mmm just like mom used to make.  We had a good laugh but we were sad to leave the comfort of our old place and roommates behind.    

Picture perfect Paris

We went to see some stores which we had researched before we got here and ended up right in front of the tourist haven that is the Eiffel Tower, but it made for a good photo op and then we moved along.  We walked near the Palais de Tokyo which seemed really interesting but unfortunately not on our agenda.  The back end of it has these great statues and they are all covered in graffiti, it also has a lot of windows smashed out and boarded up which we thought was really strange for a massive museum.   There an older woman said she loved Judys dress (we made it!) and wanted to take a photo of the two of us (sartorialist?) After that we went on and strolled down the St. Honoré, stopped to look in Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Christian Louboutin, Lanvin, and Junko Shimada before calling it a day and heading home.  We keep seeing models every where we go and one today was staring at Judy like she wanted to take her home.  Judy was too enamored to respond, too bad.   

Brrrrrrrr.....

Judy had her whole face rapped up and everyone else was wearing heels with no socks. (I think that's the first time everyone knew we weren't from Paris) check the invisible hand.
Amazing illustrations from the 20's
Vintage Couture
How did they make pixelated fabric before there was even such a thing as a pixel.

Well, winter is definitely here.  It actually snowed today and it was so freakin cold.  Most of the businesses are closed on Sunday(and Monday) so we decided to go to the Puces de St. Ouen (Flea market).  Grant really needs boots and within 5 minutes of being outside he knew his vans just weren't going to cut it. You have to walk through a huge perimeter of junky new clothes to get to the amazing vintage stuff but once you get there it is pretty unreal.  Everything from the vintage Chanel Couture shop to this crazy shop of all one of a kind accessories. The prices are pretty high but Judy considered going into permanent debt for this 1900's circus themed projector powered by a candle. Everyone is really strict about taking photos though so we only got about three before we were told it is not ok to take photos.  

The French are onto something

Here are some more photos from the past couple days.  The first one is from a really cool gallery we stumbled into featuring all these Andy Warhol photos. The next is from this bar that we walked past several times but was always too crowded to get in.  The bar is called Machine á ecrire and if the wallpaper doesn't give it away it means typewriter in french.  There was a guy singing on top of the bar and if this place were in San Francisco it would be the most popular hipster bar ever.  Lastly this is how people move furniture in Paris.  Makes sense right? forget day laborers, just get this handy elevator and shut down traffic for the whole day  so you can move in your furniture through the window.   

Graffiti Report #1

Paris is super smashed. The streets are like a free art gallery on nearly every Rue.  For the record Horfe, and space invader are killing shit.  More to come in future posts.

Touristy stuff

                            Judy battling for space at the Sacré-Coeur
                On top of it all
                 On the banks of the Seine near the Louvre 
       Judy takes a second to consult the map near George Pompidou
                                  Pullin a fast one at Yohji Yamamoto
                                       Lunch at the Water Bar

We have been here for about a week and it feels like we have already done and seen so many things.  Paris is an amazing city filled with history around nearly every corner.  Its hard to not whip out your camera and pose in front of every building on the street.   We also had lunch today at colette just to say that we did.  Everyone was looking at Judy like she was a movie star (at least in our heads).  Then we went to the brand new Yohji Yamamoto museum....I mean store.  I almost died when I saw this crazy hat was retailing for 1200 euros.   After that I didn't look at any more price tags and just oogled over each piece individually.  And lastly something about watching two gorgeous models being buzzed in to the Chanel atelier is quite a reminder that were not in San Francisco anymore.